


RWBY/EXTRA

by Balladbird



Category: Fate/EXTRA, RWBY
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/F, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28608618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balladbird/pseuds/Balladbird
Summary: The Beacon Festival has arrived!  Students from all the academies divide into groups of two and fight to the death until only one pair remains.  Blake finds herself uncertain about all of this, though. Wasn't she always alone? Was Beacon Academy always like this?The characters of RWBY forced into the tournament structure of the Fate EXTRA game series.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	RWBY/EXTRA

“Why are you still pouting by yourself!? If you keep this up for one more day, you’re going to die. Are you really okay with that, Blake?” The white shadow’s voice was stern and cool, but the words betrayed her worry, as well.  
  
Blake looked around. She was standing in a great black void, with three colored shadows standing before her. Each of the three was vaguely humanoid in shape, but otherwise so nondescript as to give not the slightest clue what they truly looked like… like a group of color-coded department store mannequins.   
  
This dream again! Every single time she fell asleep, it was the same.  
  


“By myself?” Blake repeated the accusation, her temples throbbing as she tried to force her brain to process what they were telling her. She had always been alone, hadn’t she?  
  
“Well, I mean, you’re really cool, Blake! Maybe you’ll be okay if you just sneak your way through, all ninja-like!” The red shadow was the next to speak, her voice energetic and reassuring. The white shadow turned toward the red one and groaned.  
  
“****! I understand you want to make her feel better, but don’t give her such bad advice! It doesn’t matter how stealthy she is; if she doesn’t have a Servant by midnight, she’s in trouble.” The white shadow’s hands fell onto her hips as she chastised her friend.   
  
“Aww… ***** yelled at me.” The red shadow hung her head, her shoulders slumped. An instinctive fear began to grow within Blake, who started to tremble violently. She grimaced and closed her eyes, massaging the sides of her head with the heels of her hands. This always happened when the shadows addressed one another by name. A loud static distortion would drown out the sound of their voice for that instant, leaving Blake clueless as to what they’d said. It was always coupled with this undefinable dread… that she was forgetting something important.  
  
“I-I’m not yelling! I’m just worried. I wish there were something we could do to help.” The white shadow took a step back and looked away as she stammered out her defense. The gold shadow finally broke her silence at this, wandering up between the other two and draping her arms around them, pulling them into an embrace.  
  
“Neither of you need to worry so much, she’s not alone!” The gold shadow’s voice was warm, relaxed, and confident; the voice of a woman who doubted herself almost as rarely as she took anything too seriously. She moved her head to each of the shadows in turn before looking up at Blake. “I’m ready to go anytime. All you gotta do is let me in! When someone has your back to the wall, say my name and I’ll come running.”  
  
The sound of her voice wrapped about Blake like a comforting blanket, and she could feel her trembling body start to relax immediately. She didn’t know any of these shadows, of course. She was alone, as she always had been, but each of them visiting her in her dreams brought her comfort, and the gold one most of all.   
  
Still, as she opened her eyes and let herself look at the specter, Blake couldn’t resist frowning. ‘Say her name’? No matter how she struggled to recall it, her brain refused to cooperate. She couldn’t recall anything about this figure. Nothing except the color gold and the sound of her voice.   
  
“Don’t tell me you forgot!” The gold shadow gave a soft chuckle, shaking her head. “Get your brain in the game! I’m-“  
  
The black void surrounded them began to pulse a violent red, as though angered by what the shadow was saying. Blake could only watch as the figures before her began to dissolve into pillars of colored dust, blending with each other and vanishing into the void as her dream came to an end.  
  
Then she woke up…

Blake groaned quietly as she reacquainted herself with the position she’d been in before she fell asleep: seated in a classroom and hunched over a desk with her forehead resting on the back of her hand. Her entire forearm had gone painfully tingly due to the weight of her head cutting off circulation, and she massaged it absently as she looked around the room.   
  
The classrooms of Beacon academy consisted of several rows of wooden desks arranged in a semi-circle around a lectern set up for the instructor at the center of the room. Each subsequent row of desks was elevated in a terrace-like formation to allow student in rows further back to see both the instructor and the enormous blackboard mounted onto the wall behind him.  
  
Blake was situated in the far corner of the highest row, with no students within three seats of her in any direction. Perhaps it was owed to her more feline physiology, but she enjoyed being in high places. As to the isolation, well… this was how things had always been. Blake Belladonna had never had any friends.  
  
There was no direction within the classroom, despite the instructor being seated behind the lectern. The students’ voices rose in a cacophonous din as a dozen disparate conversations carried on simultaneously. Blake looked around for a moment before stretching with a yawn. She reached into her desk and produced one of the books she’d borrowed from the library.   
  
This was how things had always been. Beacon Academy didn’t teach anything. Classes were just to keep track of students until the festival began.

  
“Um… Instructor Torchwick?” A female voice from the front of the room hesitantly rose above the ruckus. One of the students from down below had called out to the Instructor, her hand slowly lifting into the air.  
  
The instructor had been hunched over his podium like a dragon hoarding a pile of treasure, his cheek resting on his fist as he absently flipped through his scroll. When he heard the student calling for his attention, he sighed and gave her a grumpy look.  
  
“What’s up?” The instructor offered in an even tone. The smile spread across his face suggested warm friendliness but was starkly opposed by the glare of his narrowed green eye, which implied annoyed contempt. He was a tall, handsome man at some stage of his twenties, dressed in a long white coat and black gloves. His short red hair was styled meticulously, with his bangs arranged into a series of sharp points that fell over his right eye like a curtain.   
  
Blake stared down at him, her eyes focusing as if she were noticing him for the first time. Something about him caused adrenaline to surge through her, and she could feel her muscles tense up in preparation for conflict. Had he always been an instructor here?  
  
Jumbled memories began to scramble to the fore of her mind, images of battles, emotions, faces… all familiar, yet alien to her. Any time she tried to focus on one of the scenes, however, she was greeted with a flash of light and a wave of pain that shot through her body like an electrical current, forcing her to abandon the attempt.  
  
This was fine. Obviously, he was a Beacon instructor, or he wouldn’t be here. This was how things had always been.  
  
“W-well, uh,” The girl who had called for his attention flushed, clearly overwhelmed by the intensity of his stare. She looked away, awkwardly brushing a strand of brown hair away from her face. “I was just wondering if we would be… learning anything today? We, uh, we haven’t done anything all week.”  
  
The instructor cocked his head at this, his smile growing wider as a mischievous sparkle gleamed in his eye.  
  
“Haven’t done anything? What kind of attitude is that? Free study! This has been free study!” He scanned the room as he spoke, touching a hand to his chest and extending the other. “I may be your instructor, but I’m just a man. I can’t teach you half as well as life itself! Besides, deep down you must realize we’re all just killing time until the fun starts.”  
  
The classroom fell silent at this, and Blake could sense an air of anxiety begin to sink into the students. She looked around, and indeed, her classmates had begun to exchange nervous glances with each other.  
  
The Academy Festival.  
  
Blake wasn’t really paying much attention to the outside world, this past week, but she couldn’t help absorbing the gist of what was going on. It was all anyone at the academy was talking about, after all. An event that would span for seven weeks, during which time the students would divide into pairs and fight to the death. When only one pair remained, the event would conclude, and the victors would be granted the Prize.  
  
Given her nature as a loner, Blake hadn’t spared much thought about the festival, omnipresent though it was. She didn’t even know the finer details of how it was supposed to work. When the time rolled around, she figured she’d just continue with her life as always and let the rest of the students deal with the drama.  
  
“The deadline is midnight, right? Some of us still haven’t partnered up.” A male student’s voice lamented from the middle row. This caught the instructor’s attention, who gave the boy a curious look.  
  
“Oh? That’s distressing to hear! I enjoy procrastinating as much as the next guy, but you guys are students! I feel like there’s an expression about early birds and worms, but damned if I can remember it now. How many of you haven’t partnered up yet?”  
  
The students exchanged awkward looks and began to raise their hands in response to his question. By the time they’d finished, almost everyone in the classroom had extended their hand, though Blake declined to do so. This had nothing to do with her.  
  
“Geez! I leave you guys to teach yourselves for one week and you drop the ball this hard? If word of this gets out, people might start to think I’m not cut out for this whole ‘instructor’ thing.” He sighed and shook his head, leaning forward on the lectern before him. He scanned the faces of his students as a thoughtful frown began to spread across his lips. “Alright, I guess I should do something about this. Remedial classes! Everyone who hasn’t partnered up by 7 PM tonight is to meet me in the courtyard. We’ll see what we can’t do to fix this problem before anyone finds out.”  
  
This reassurance did a little to assuage the students, breaking the spell of anxiety that had settled over them and allowing a few pockets of quiet conversation to begin erupting within the rows again. Blake shrugged, looking down at the book in her hands, and finally cracking it open.  
  
Whether it was a ‘free study’ class or a remedial class, she would spend it as she always had, reading books and ignoring the world. Wiling away the moments of her life in miserable isolation.  
  
Just as things had always been…  
  
***

After class, Blake found herself climbing the stairs to the highest level of the academy building. Maybe it was the dream she’d had in class. Maybe it was the feeling that had come over her when she looked at her instructor afterward, or the strange sense that something was out of place. Likely, it was all these things at once. Whatever the cause, though, she felt compelled to visit the rooftop. 

She wanted to see the world she’d been living in for the past week, and to reinforce to herself that it was real and right. Despite the certainty she wanted to try to pretend she had, she felt a strong trepidation as she reached her destination. This confusion that had been slowly mounting for the past week was already overstaying its welcome.

She opened the door to the roof area, a flat expanse of concrete dotted with a few picnic benches and surrounded by a 10-foot-high chain link fence. Even from the doorway she could see the perimeter of the academy grounds: thick, unbroken forest that surrounded the entire vicinity of the campus, save for the area directly in front of the gates, which hosted a great paved road that extended to the limit of the space. The surrounding area extended perhaps a mile in every direction before ending abruptly, sealed inside by a massive white barrier.  
  


Blake took a deep breath, walking until she reached the fence and gripping one of the chain links with a sigh. The feline ears atop her head wiggled absently as her eyes scanned the horizon.   
  
_This enclosed space. This forest… this is how Beacon Academy has always been. Everything is the same as ever. No need to worry._

The words tried to reason away that apprehension in the back of her mind but couldn’t seem to quite unseat it. Had she always been alone? Had the school always been a sealed off, separate world?  
  
“Woo! We’re all signed up now. Ready to go!” A cheerful female voice broke the sullen discord of Blake’s thoughts. She turned to find a pair of students had arrived at the rooftop while she was distracted.

“We have, yes.” One of the students replied in a calm voice. He was an average-sized teenager wearing a dark green tailcoat and white pants. His black hair extended halfway down his back and had a magenta streak across the center of his bangs.

“Have a bit more enthusiasm, Ren. We’re participants! I even managed to get everything registered on time for once. Aren’t you excited?” The owner of the voice Blake had heard earlier was a hyper-looking woman with dark green eyes and a disarmingly earnest smile. Her orange hair was kept short, ending in a series of points around the base of her neck.   
  
As the girl student spoke, she raised the back of her right hand toward the boy, curling away the pink fingerless glove she was wearing so she could show off the strange symbol that had been tattooed onto her skin in red ink. Something about the sight of it made the hairs at the back of Blake’s neck rise.

“’Excited’ isn’t the word I’d use, exactly, Nora.” Corrected Ren with a shrug. The two of them made their way to one of the picnic benches and sat down together. “Also, I maintain we would likely fare much better in the contest if we’d reversed these roles.”  
  
‘Nora’ and ‘Ren’? A throb of pain shot through Blake’s head, so severe she had to close her eyes out of fear they may explode from her sockets. They felt so familiar, yet she couldn’t remember them at all.

“Y’mean, if I was the Servant? Yeah, maybe, but y’know how it goes! When it came time to sign up, I realized I really wanted to try being the Master.” Nora nodded her head vigorously, crossing her arms and closing her eyes, as if her actions were the most logical possible choice.  
  
“That does, indeed, sound like you.” Ren sighed and offered a meek shrug. He didn’t sound especially angry or surprised by her actions… merely resigned to be dragged along by her whims.

“Damn right it does!” She chuckled, beaming warmly at him as she reached out and clasped his shoulder. “So, give it your all! I’ll be counting on you from now on, ‘Archer’.”  
  
“Heh, I shall do what I can to not betray your expectations, ‘Master’.”  
  
Blake drew a hand through her hair short black hair, looking away awkwardly. Perhaps it would be best if she left these two alone. As she began to shuffle toward the door, though, Nora’s eyes fell upon her, and she flashed the cat faunus a cheerful grin.

“Oh! It’s Blake! How long have you been there?” She called out with a friendly wave. Blake paused in mid-step at this, Nora’s friendliness catching her completely by surprise.   
  
“Do… we know each other?” Blake tilted her head toward her schoolmate, cat ears flicking curiously. Nora frowned at this, as if she didn’t fully understand the question.  
  
“Are you feeling okay? Anyway, come hang out with us! We’re waiting for our friends to show up. Gonna have one last party before the festival starts, and we gotta be enemies.” Nora turned her palm inward, converting her wave into a beckoning gesture. Blake was confused by her warmth, but something about the two of them did feel familiar and comforting, so she found herself approaching them before she’d fully realized what she was doing.   
  
“…You’re joining the festival, too?” Blake asked, her gaze settling on the symbol at the back of Nora’s hand.   
  
“Well, no one would be here, if they weren’t.” Ren explained, looking Blake over curiously as a thoughtful frown spread across his face. “You don’t seem to have been designated as either ‘Servant’ or ‘Master’, yet. Have you not found a partner?”  
  
“Come to think of it, that is weird, huh?” Nora scratched her neck, apparently not noticing whatever it was Ren was talking about until he mentioned it. “The deadline is midnight, right? Isn’t it kinda bad to still be alone? You’ll be in danger once the festival starts.”   
  
Blake sighed. She had no interest in this ‘festival’. She didn’t have much interest in anything, for that matter. She wasn’t sure what she was even doing here. This thought caused another static hiss to erupt within her brain; half-memories trying to force their way through the haze in her mind before she shook them away.

“I’m not planning to participate. It’s got nothing to do with me.” She finally said. She expected this to be the end of the matter, but her words only seemed to increase the worry on the pair’s faces.   
  
“Have you not been paying attention in class?” Ren asked, concern heavy in his voice. The question elicited a curious blink from the cat faunus.   
  
“Wait, you actually learn things in your class?” Blake asked, her mind falling back to all the days of Instructor Torchwick napping in front of the classroom and leaving the students to do what they pleased. Ren and Nora exchanged nervous looks.   
  
“Blake, when the festival begins, only Instructors and Participants will be allowed to remain on the campus. You’ll be in a lot of trouble if you haven’t been registered.” Ren shook his head, eyes wide with shock at her ignorance. 

“I-I see… I didn’t know that.” Blake admitted, looking away. Why did she understand so little about what was going on? The static in her head grew louder now, almost threatening to drown out the sound of her classmates’ voices as they spoke.   
  
“Well, hey! You still have a little time, right? Just find a partner and get registered. Have you asked your teammates?” Nora offered, extending a finger upward to emphasize her point.   
  
“My tea-“ Blake was confused by her words. She didn’t have any teammates! She’d been alone from the start. Unfortunately, before she could finish her inquiry, the door to the rooftop was thrown open again, turning everyone’s attention toward the new arrivals as another pair of students approached the group.   
  
“Good evening Ren, Nora. Did we keep you waiting long?” A girl with long red hair was the first through the door. Seeing her teammates, she nodded and gave them a warm smile. Nora reciprocated this with a goofy grin of her own, nodding her head toward the newcomer.   
  
“There you are, Pyrrha! Ready to get this party started?”  
  
Blake couldn’t help but stare at this girl. Much like with Nora and Ren, she felt a strange warm familiarity when she looked at her, but there was something else, too. A foreboding sense that she shouldn’t be here. That she shouldn’t exist.   
  
“Yeah, sorry for the delay. Had a bit of a kitchen mishap. Still, everything turned out okay! Today you learn that Ren isn’t the only one in our group who knows his way around a stove.” A gentle male voice came from the other side of the doorway, as a blonde boy followed Pyrrha out into the open rooftop. He walked in with his head held high, a picnic basket hanging from his arm.   
  
“I look forward to the challenge, Jaune.” Ren said in a tone much more formal than the joking statement deserved. The two newcomers came to the picnic table where Ren and Nora were seated, sitting down on the bench across from them as they set the basket down. It was only then that Jaune realized Blake was standing there, and he looked up at her with his deep blue gaze.  
  
“Oh, are you here too, Blake? You’re free to join us if you like.” He had an exceedingly kind voice, which matched the smile he offered as he looked up at her, absently drawing a hand through his short blonde hair as he spoke. The smile failed to reach his eyes, however, which were burdened by a darkness Blake couldn’t fully understand. Despite having no memory of this boy, she couldn’t help feeling that such darkness was unusual for him. Had something happened?  
  
“N-no, I don’t want to intrude. I have to take care of something, anyway.” Blake shook her head, finally resolving that it was time to leave. Jaune offered a curt nod at her decision, Nora absently waving farewell despite having already begun to dig through the basket Jaune had brought. The four of them clearly had a strong relationship, a fact that left Blake feeling empty and jealous, even if she didn’t understand why.  
  
As she headed back into the main building, she paused to look back at them, her eyes falling on the girl named Pyrrha one final time. By now, their group had become fully engrossed in their little party, sharing loud, boisterous small talk as they handed out food, but as happy as the scene was, the presence of that red-haired girl made Blake uneasy. With an uneven sigh she shook her head and left them to their fun.  
  
…this was how things had always been.

***  
  
Darkness had long since fell, but Blake was still wandering the corridors of Beacon Academy, a thoughtful frown on her face. It hadn’t just been Ren and Nora… it seemed everyone was talking about the festival now.   
  
“That’s so cool! I was hoping you’d be a Saber!”  
  
“I’m scared. Promise we can survive until the end, no matter what.”  
  
“I still don’t have a partner… I’m so screwed.”  
  
The voices of her passing classmates were full of anxious excitement, as if something fun and terrible were about to befall them. Blake wanted to keep telling herself she wasn’t involved, but she was beginning to suspect that she’d been lying to herself. The warning Ren and Nora had given her rhymed with what she remembered from her dream back in the classroom.

_“If you keep this up for one more day, you’re going to die. Are you really okay with that, Blake?”_

A shiver ran down her spine at that. Maybe she was always alone, maybe things really had always been like this, and maybe she didn’t care about the festival, but despite all of that, she knew she didn’t want to die. Uncomfortable as she felt about this festival, she would need to enter it before midnight, and for that, she would need a partner.

Blake pulled her scroll from her pocket and double-checked the time. It was just past 9 PM. She had less than three hours before the festival began. Her thoughts fell back to the offer Instructor Torchwick had made for his unpartnered students. They were supposed to meet in the courtyard a couple hours ago, but maybe they would still be there?  
  
It was getting so late that other students became rarer and rarer in the hallway as she moved. By the time she finally reached the courtyard entrance, the world had fallen silent around her, save for the sound of her shoes on the marble floors. Perhaps, if she hadn’t spent the entire day feeling suspicious about how off everything had been, she would have recognized that something was amiss, but in the moment, she was focused on the looming festival. As she reached the courtyard door, she took a deep breath, released it, and stepped outside.  
  


…The smell of blood immediately overwhelmed her.   
  
The bodies of dozens of her classmates were strewn about the grassy space, laying crumpled in still heaps and thrown against the benches and tables that littered the relaxation area. As Blake took a step off the path and into grass, one of the fallen students stirred, looking up at her and reaching out his hand, pleading for help. His eyes met hers for a moment before the light left them and he fell back to the ground, red fluid beginning to pool beneath his body.  
  
Blake started to tremble uncontrollably as she looked at the chaos around her, a primal fear welling within her chest.   
  
“Seems a black cat has crossed our path. Bad luck for her.” Torchwick’s voice sounded dry and sarcastic. Blake scanned about for its source, finding her instructor seated at the lip of the fountain in the courtyard’s center. His elbows were resting on his knees, his fingers meshed as he rested his chin against them, and his green eyes glowed malevolently as he looked out at her.   
  
“…What have you done?” Blake instinctively took a step back toward the door, tears flickering in her eyes as she looked toward her instructor. He drew in a long breath, looking away from her as he gestured to the bodies all around.   
  
“It’s called ‘narrowing the field’, Kitty Cat. Only one pair gets to survive this stupid game, and I have a heavy bias on who I want that pair to be. The System drops its guard a little bit in the leadup to the main event, and it’s easier to kill the competition before they partner up, so I figured I’d make life a little easier for myself.”  
  
Blake opened her mouth to speak, but found that no words would form, her gaze moving from body to body as she tried to comprehend what she was looking at. She wasn’t close to any of her classmates, but they had been part of her life! She had seen them alive just a few hours ago, and now they were dead.   
  
Seeing her reaction, a flicker of sorrow flashed across Torchwick’s face before vanishing behind a mirthless smile. He drew a cigar from the pocket of his coat, bringing it to his lips and igniting it with a lighter drawn from his sleeve.   
  
“I get it. Honestly, a scene like this is overwhelming, even for a guy like me. I’m a proud thug, not a hitman.” He said matter-of-factly. He took a long drag from his cigar, angling his head upward as he exhaled the smoke. “Still… put me in a position where I have to choose between ‘killing’ or ‘dying’ and, well… I’m always going to be the one who does the killing.”  
  
Blake took another step back, reaching for the door she came in through, but stopping when she felt a strange, rubbery texture block her hand. She turned around to discover that some kind of seal had been placed over the doorway, the energy barrier flickering like glass as she touched it. It felt like Blake’s heart stopped in her chest as she turned back toward Torchwick.   
  
“Are you going to kill me, now?” Her voice was faint and distant. All of this felt like a dream she couldn’t wake up from. 

“Hmm, I wonder. Honestly, lookin’ at you Is giving me a bad feeling.” Torchwick took another drag of his cigar before cocking his gaze to the side. “What do you think, Assassin? I wouldn’t be opposed to letting this scared little kitten scamper off.”

Huh? Blake primed her ears, scanning the area around him carefully. Who was he talking to? They were the only people here-- who were still alive, anyway. Despite that, Blake did feel a strange, murderous aura fill the air around them; a sense of impending danger was so strong that it was sending adrenaline rushing through her veins. Torchwick continued to look over at seemingly no-one, eventually laughing and giving a dispassionate nod.  
  
“Had a feeling that’s how you’d feel. There’s such a thing as loving your job a little too much, you know?” His laugh was dry and humorless, his eyes moving back toward Blake as he gave an apologetic wink. “Sorry, I tried. Don’t hate us too badly for this. Well, you can hate us for this if you want to. I don’t actually care that much.”

Even now he made no move toward her, leaning forward on his hands and closing his eyes. Despite his apparent apathy, however, that sense of danger began to build in the air around Blake. Goosebumps sprouted across her skin as her eyes darted left and right, trying to find the source of the murderous aura that was suffocating her.   
  
Three seconds…four…five… Her straining eyes finally caught a flash, as the moonlight reflected off a blur of motion to her right. She was only barely able to raise an arm in her defense before a tremendous force slammed into her side. There was a crackle as her aura attempted to absorb the force of the blow, cracking almost immediately as she was sent flying into the far wall. She turned her body, surprised to find she had expertly honed reflexes that allowed her to extend her legs against the concrete she was quickly approaching, absorbing as much of the impact as she could before springing herself forward.   
  
Fighting like this felt natural! She instinctively brought a hand to her hip, reaching for a weapon that she should have known wouldn’t be there. she had never fought before, after all! Yet as she leapt from leg to leg across the grass, she always landed gracefully on the balls of her feet, keeping her weight and balance distributed as she moved with a precision she hadn’t known she was capable of.  
  
Her assailant was invisible, but not completely: light refracted around her form unnaturally, giving Blake the slightest trace of an outline to try to follow with her eyes as she fled. Whatever it was, it was humanoid, significantly smaller than Torchwick himself, and fast. Extremely fast. The outline closed the distance between itself and Blake twice as quickly as she could create it.   
  
She had to escape, but how? That strange barrier covered the door she’d come in through, and there were no other doors leading out to the courtyard. Perhaps she could use the fountain to jump up to the rooftops? She seemed to have a surprising amount of agility, despite never having fought before, so that should be more than possible.   
  
She turned toward the fountain, but before she could take another step, her assailant flashed beside her. She watched as an invisible limb swung in her direction and raised her arm almost instinctively to deflect the blow. She succeeded in knocking the attack to the side, attempting to counterattack by throwing her fist into the central core of the shimmering shape before her.

As naturally as she’d taken to combat, fighting without a weapon felt alien to her, but she wasn’t sure what kind of weapon she’d even expected to find when she went looking for one earlier, so this had to do. She planted her feet, swaying her body into the blow as her fist hooked into her enemy with all the force she could muster.  
  
A direct hit, but her target didn’t even budge. Indeed, Blake felt a slash of pain radiate down her forearm from the point where her fist had made contact. It was as if her body were made of wood, and she’d just attacked someone with a body made of steel. She gasped, half in pain and half in surprise, as the force of her punch compromised her balance.   
  
Another flash of light, another sickening crack as Blake’s aura attempted to protect her, only to be punctured like a slice of swiss cheese. This time she felt a blunt force slam into her stomach, knocking the wind away from her as she was sent flying backward once again. This time, there was no recovering herself, and her back slammed into the wall at full speed.   
  
Blake’s vision flickered, her extremities numbing as pain from the impact overwhelmed her. She slumped to a seat on the ground, back resting against the wall as her unfocused eyes tried desperately to find her assailant.   
  
Why? Why was this happening? Why was everything about this world so wrong? As her mind began to haze over, she remembered the dream she’d had earlier, those figures of light who’d been trying to guide her. She couldn’t remember their names, nor their faces, but the thought of them reassured her, all the same.   
  
_“I’m ready to go anytime. All you gotta do is let me in! When someone has your back to the wall, say my name and I’ll come running.”_  
  
“Standing and fighting was a bad call, Kitty Cat. Shoulda ran after you made her miss.” Torchwick offered in a bored tone. He hadn’t moved from his seat during the entire brief fight, seeming content to watch in relaxation as his invisible friend handled all the combat. “Once a student is branded as a ‘Servant’, their bodies are augmented. Whether you could have beat them in a fight before becomes irrelevant: a human’s body can’t compete with a Servant’s construct.”  
  
‘Servant’… Blake frowned. More festival terminology. She closed her eyes and tried to steady her breathing, though she couldn’t fill her lungs without inviting more pain.

Was she really going to die like this? Murdered for reasons she only barely understood, by someone she barely knew, and left lying on the ground, alone and forgotten? The thought stirred a deep regret in her, as well as a frustration. She was leaving something important undone, even if she couldn’t remember what it was!  
  
Whatever ability Blake’s attacker was using to conceal her appearance began to fade away as she slowly walked forward for the kill. Her hair appeared first: half brown and half-pink locks spilling out around a pale face and falling until their ends reached the small of her back. Her eyes were likewise bi-colored, one brown and one pink, narrowed into a condescending slant as a sadistic smile split her face.   
  
She was a tiny woman, shorter than Blake by almost a foot, and carried an umbrella made of white and pink lace. It seemed to be the weapon she’d been attacking with; she kept the tool retracted and allowed it to rest over her shoulders like a sword as she slowly closed the distance between herself and her victim, almost as if she wanted to savor the killing blow.   
  
Blake watched her approach without emotion, a buzzing sound beginning to grow louder in her brain. This girl, ‘Assassin’, also felt vaguely familiar to her, but no matter how she searched, she couldn’t remember. A final breath escaped her as she found she no longer had the strength to even keep her head held up and allowed her gaze to fall toward her lap. She guessed it didn’t matter much, now. She was about to die.   
  
_“…say my name and I’ll come running.”  
  
_The image of those three figures of light intruded upon her self-pity, returning her memory to that recurring dream she’d been having. The red light, and the white one…both made her feel an intense, nostalgic longing, but the gold one in particular sent a pang of regret into the depths of her chest. She was forgetting something precious, and where before that nagging sense had been frustrating, now it was heartrending. To die without remembering everything else would be tragic, but to die without remembering this person… it would be a betrayal of someone particularly important.

The back of Blake’s right hand burned. It was starting to sting so badly that even the sensation of being slammed into a wall couldn’t compare. She gritted her teeth to stop herself from crying out, touching her left hand over her right as a new sensation overwhelmed her.

  
A strange, warm energy had begun to flow through her body, bathing her skin in a golden light that flowed out through her and into the wall at her back, casting it in the same color. This aura seemed to heal her body and restore her strength, helping her to push her hands against the hard concrete behind her and lift herself awkwardly to her feet. As Assassin drew closer, Blake sucked a deep breath in, and spoke a name she couldn’t remember.   
  
Finally, the energy that had been building behind her erupted like an explosion, a beam of light narrowing into a golden humanoid form as it burst down between Blake and Assassin. The tri-colored girl realized what was happening, and attempted to leap away, but it was too late.  
  
“B-bwuhhhhh!” The figure of light made an incomprehensible cry as it charged forth so quickly Blake’s eyes could scarcely follow, a fist slamming into Assassin’s gut so suddenly that the girl couldn’t even set her aura in her defense. Assassin crumpled forward, eyes wide and lips twisted in a pained expression as the force of the blow rocked her. Her knees buckled and her pupils dilated as she was forced to grit her teeth to try to hold onto consciousness.   
  
“Assassin!” Torchwick cried out as he leapt to his feet suddenly, slipping the glove off his right hand to expose that the insignia tattooed there had taken on a bright glow, shining even brighter as he finished with, “To me!”   
  
Blake’s golden guardian had been loading up a right hook as Assassin was doubling over, no doubt intending to kill her with a single strike. Torchwick’s command came right as she finally loosed her attack, however, and by the time her fist reached the place where Assassin’s head used to be, some magical force warped the small girl back to Torchwick’s side, causing the killing blow to sail harmlessly through the air. As the force of her attack caused the golden form to rotate, her featureless face looked toward Blake, and she paused a moment.  
  
Blake had pushed herself fully onto her feet during the exchange, although her legs wavered from the effort of supporting her weight, and she needed to keep one hand back against the wall to protect herself from falling over again. She looked at her savior curiously, as the being looked back at her, and for a moment felt profound peace.  
  
That’s right! She wasn’t alone. She’d never been alone. She still didn’t remember the details, but as she looked at this figure, she understood that her suspicions had been correct: this place was all wrong.  
  
“What the hell is goin’ on here!?” A gruff, concerned voice shouted from above. For an instant, the attention of everyone in the courtyard was pulled up to the roof of the building beside them, where a man stood looking back down at them.   
  
“By the gods… no wonder the number of entries was so low.” A horrified grimace crossed his face as his dark eyes scoured the piles of corpses that littered the courtyard. He drew a silver flask from his hip and unscrewed it, taking a long pull of the contents within it.  
  
Tall, lean, with disheveled black hair and an unshaven face… this was one of the instructors, if Blake remembered correctly. Instructor Qrow. That, too, felt like it should be wrong, but by now she felt that sensation so often that it almost seemed normal.   
  
“You. Are you responsible for this?” After surveying the scene, Qrow’s gaze eventually settled on Torchwick, who offered an empty smile and a casual shrug in his defense.  
  
“Me? You got it all wrong. It was like this when I got here.” Torchwick responded, disdain thick in his voice as he dragged at his cigar. Qrow gave an unamused grunt, looking at the symbol tattooed onto the back of Torchwick’s hand.   
  
“Wait, you’re a Master? How’d you pull that off?” Qrow instinctively brought his hand to the base of the weapon strapped to his back. “You sure as shit don’t look like an academy student.”  
  
Torchwick feigned disgust at the other man’s words, shaking his head in response to a pretend offense.  
  
“How very rude! Assassin, are you listening to this guy?” Assassin had recovered from the surprise attack she’d suffered, and upon having her attention called she looked back at the older man with an amused smile, covering her mouth with the back of her hand as she snickered. “Sir, I’ll have you know I’m only 18 years old! I have a thyroid condition, and I’m very self-conscious about it!”  
  
“Hmph, I bet.” Qrow, unlike Torchwick, was clearly not enjoying himself tonight, taking another sip from his flask as he looked from Torchwick and his partner to Blake and her light construct. “Well, I can’t do anything about who the System decides to let participate, but I _am_ an instructor. Festival ain’t started yet, and this ain’t the arena. If you insist on attackin’ another Master right in front of me, I’m happy to smack ya with a penalty.”  
  
Blake would have struggled to comprehend the finer points of their discussion even if she’d been fully alert, but as she was now, they may as well have been speaking a different language. Her eyelids were suddenly very heavy, the buzzing in her head nearly relaxing enough to lull her into sleep standing up. She was so tired of not understanding, and so exhausted by today’s constant confusion. The golden figure seemed to sense her weakness, wandering back to lend her its shoulder.  
  
Torchwick eyed the two of them for a second, arms crossed thoughtfully, before he sighed. He removed the stub of his cigar from his lips, crushed the flame against his gloved left hand, and flicked the remains into the dirt.  
  
“Alright, Assassin, situation’s gotten dicey. We’re pullin’ back.” He said firmly. Assassin frowned at this, so deeply her chin dimpled as she stomped her foot, jerking her body back to point a finger aggressively at Blake. In response, Torchwick reached out and rested his palm against the top of her head.   
  
“Look, I get it, that sucker punch was bullshit. You would absolutely have won if she hadn’t come out of nowhere like that. We gotta look at the big picture now, though. Even if Captain Bringdown wasn’t up there watching us, now that the Kitty Cat is a proper Master, the System will interfere if we fight too long. C’mon! We just eliminated almost half the competition, and all it cost us was a Command Seal. Today was a good day.”  
  
Assassin looked up at the hand resting against her, her frown lessening a bit. She rocked her head thoughtfully a few times before sighing silently, leaning into his hand as she threw her arms to the side dramatically.   
  
“Atta girl! Let’s live to fight another day.” He winked at his partner as a platform of white light formed beneath their feet. It slowly moved upward, and the portions of their bodies that it passed through vanished into the air. Once the process of transportation had begun, Torchwick turned his attention to Blake one last time.  
  
“Summoning a Servant from the network was a crafty play. Well done in surviving, Kitty! I’d say, ‘let’s meet again’, but I’d really prefer we didn’t. If you wanted to go ahead and die before our paths crossed again, I’d owe you a solid.”  
  
The two of them vanished into the light, Assassin pulling down the bottom of her eyelid as she stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry at Blake before finally fading away. Blake watched them leave with a tired expression, before looking down at her throbbing right hand.   
  
A symbol had begun to etch itself onto the flesh at the back of her hand, and as it slowly took form, the figure of light who had come to her aid began to assume a more human form. Before Blake could even begin to process what she was seeing, however, her eyes fluttered shut, and she collapsed onto the ground in a heap.  
  
****

**START OF THE BEACON ACADEMY FESTIVAL: 64 MASTERS REMAIN**

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my little side project! This is something I’m throwing together in my spare time, mostly as a time filler for weeks when I’m not working on my main writing project. I wasn’t sure if this counted as a proper ‘crossover’ or not, since I’m borrowing the tournament structure and formatting of a Fate EXTRA grail war, but 100% of the cast is from RWBY. Figured I’d call it a crossover just to be safe, though. Thanks for giving it a shot! As with all my writing projects, whether I continue it or not will depend on how much demand seems to exist for it, so let me know if you liked it.


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